


Greater Love

by sahiya



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Episode Related, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-28
Updated: 2010-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-10 20:29:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/103949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liz could not remember a time before the Captain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Greater Love

**Author's Note:**

> This is my reaction fic to "The Beast Below," so of course there are spoilers. Thanks to Yamx and Kivrin for providing me with two awesome ideas, which I then smushed into this. Thanks also to Fuzzyboo03 for being an awesome beta reader.

  
Liz could not remember a time before the Captain. All throughout her childhood, whenever something terrible happened, he was there, striding through the halls of their palace as though he owned them. He was in the stories, too, the ones about the Doctor, and though the Doctor hadn't been seen in Britain for many years, as long as the Captain was there they would be safe.

Somehow, she never once questioned that he was the same Captain as the one in the stories. The Captain and the Doctor, forevermore. Saving them all, again and again.

She was six the first time he spoke to her as he passed her the jam at breakfast with her mum and uncle. She was seventeen the first time she kissed him, twenty-three the first time he kissed her back, and twenty-nine the first time she dragged him into her bed. _Dragged_ being the operative word - those braces of his were useful in so many ways.

She was thirty-four and a new mum when the skies grew hot. He came to see her, joined her in the cold bath she had the servants draw, and drank with her the last of the champagne. There were no grapes left anywhere in the world.

"Something terrible is about to happen," he told her. "You have to stop it."

"Something terrible _is_ happening," she countered. And then, because he looked so old and so tired and so terribly sad, she added, "I'll try."

And then . . . she forgot. Not him, never him, but the sound of her own beloved daughter screaming, the hot, metallic stench of desperation, the shadow of the starwhale falling over London - all of that, she forgot. She could not bear that she had decided that this was Britain: a nation of butchers, torturers . . . slave-owners.

And then it was over.

She didn't remember, because she couldn't. Two-hundred and fifty years of her life, sliced clean away. But one thing was very clear to her now: she could not remember what had become of the Captain. The Captain, who would never have condoned this. The Captain, who would never have agreed to forget. The Captain, who could survive anything - perhaps even being eaten by a starwhale.

"It wouldn't," Hawthorne said, when she asked him. "He was the only one, aside from the children."

"You _tried_?" she hissed. "After all his years of service, you -"

"On your orders, Your Majesty."

She took a step back, confronted once more with the gaping chasm that was her knowledge of herself. "Take me to him," she said, when she could speak. "Immediately."

Hawthorne nodded.

He led her deeper and darker to a hot, stifling room at the base of the Tower. There she found him - the Captain, lying crumpled on the bare floor, leaning against one of the starwhale's tentacles with his eyes shut. She stood very still in the threshold and watched as one fearsome claw descended and gently, oh so gently, stroked the Captain's hair.

He opened his eyes. "Hullo, Liz."

"Captain," she gasped. "I'm -" _Sorry_ withered and died on her tongue.

He stood and stretched. His back cracked. "Don't be. It's all right. I needed a nice, long break. I'll admit the accommodations left something to be desired," he added, glancing around at the bare room, "and the food could've been better. But I can't fault the company." He reached up with an extraordinarily tender smile and stroked the tentacle. Then he glanced back at her, still smiling. "Thanks for springing me, though. I was starting to get bored."

"Starting to - you've been down here for two-hundred and fifty years!"

The Captain shrugged. "Blink of an eye for me. And I think it might be the longest I've ever gone without dying."

Not for nothing was Liz the tenth of her name. She drew herself up and lifted her chin. "Nonetheless, Captain, We owe you a great debt. Name your reward - anything that it is in Our power to give."

The Captain glanced down, lifted his arm, and gave himself an experimental sniff. He flinched and grimaced. "Well, a shower for starters. And then," he paused, looking Liz up and down before meeting her eyes again, "dinner. In your suite. If it please Your Majesty."

She blinked, astonished. "It does."

"Good." He kissed her on the forehead. "Missed you, Liz." He turned to go - and suddenly stumbled, as the tentacle he'd been stroking knocked into him. He laughed and turned to rest a hand on it. "Don't worry, sweetheart, I'll come visit." Apparently mollified, the starwhale withdrew, and the Captain turned away, bounding up the stairs on legs impossibly strong after so many decades of imprisonment.

Liz stared after him. There was an ache in her throat to match the one in her chest. "May God have mercy on our souls," she whispered.

Hawthorne laid a hand in the crook of her arm and turned her gently. The starwhale's tentacles twisted slowly back and forth. "If there is any comfort at all in this, Your Majesty, it is that I believe they already have."

_Fin._


End file.
